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It’s Not “Stress Testing” Canadian Real Estate Buyers, The Credit Cycle Is Breaking Down

Canadians are slowing their borrowing, especially for real estate. Bank of Canada (BoC) numbers show credit growth continued to slow in July. Growth even reached decade low levels for real estate lending. The slowing growth is a major sign that Canada’s credit is entering a down cycle.

Credit Cycles, Lending, and Asset Prices

Hopefully regular readers know the basics of a credit cycle by now, but here’s an intro for you newbies. Credit is determined by borrower risk, which moves with business and real estate. When home prices are rising, credit is easy since the chances of defaulting on a loan are greatly reduced. If a borrower can’t make their payments in a booming market, they can always list and sell before defaulting. The easy access to credit makes it cheap, especially for things like real estate. That’s the basics of the credit up cycle.

When business and real estate fundamentals begin to deteriorate, we enter the down cycle. Lenders are tighter with lending, and cut down on available credit… or their access to cheap credit becomes tighter. This results in higher lending rates, which drop borrowing even further. Once credit tightens, consumption and large asset prices begin to adjust to liquidity. The public isn’t notified until it’s already begun, but there’s some signs to figure out what they’re thinking. If lenders could issue credit, they would. If credit growth slows down, it’s because they don’t have enough qualified demand.

Household Debt Reached Over $2.12 Trillion

Canadian household debt reached a new all-time high, as growth continued to decelerate. The balance of outstanding credit at large lenders reached $2.128 trillion in June, up 4.1% from last year. That’s a big change considering growth was at 5.8% last year. All signs point to growth moving lower as well, as the one-month annualized rate fell to 2.3%. Let’s break that down to see where Canadians are borrowing.

Canadian Household Debt Outstanding

Total debt held by Canadian households, in Canadian dollars.

Source: Bank of Canada, Better Dwelling.

Canadians Owe Over $1.5 Trillion On Residential Real Estate

The Canadian real estate debt binge continued, but at a much slower pace. Outstanding mortgage debt stood at $1.515 trillion in June, up $5.52 billion from the month before. The annual pace of growth fell to 4.1%, the lowest levels since 2001. Since we already discussed what was happening with lending and rates in 2001, we won’t bore you again. Those still curious can take a trip back to Monday’s read.

Canadian Household Debt Change

Annual percent change in debt held by Canadian households.

Source: Bank of Canada, Better Dwelling.

Canadians Owe Over $612 Billion In Consumer Loans

Consumer credit, like the kind you used to finance that blender, reached an all-time high. The balance reached $612.32 billion in June, up $3.73 billion from the month before. This also represented an annual increase of 4.1%, about 35% lower than the same month last year. Totally not interesting, until you realize that the consumer growth rate is falling with mortgage growth. Unless we’re stress testing car and blender loans for higher rates, consumers are tapped out and/or lending is tightening. Either case, the cost of borrowing typically moves higher without an interest rate cut, stemming further demand.

The slowdown of credit growth shouldn’t be a huge surprise to anyone. Household debt has doubled in just over 10 years, playing a large part of the Canadian economy. Home prices across the country have also doubled over roughly the same period. This was driven largely by the easy access to debt. The slowing growth of credit is going to have some fall out, until the credit cycle boots up again. Surely that can’t impact home prices, right?

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Many of these ring cities were special until housing development went hog wild and every last forest and farm field got paved over in the last 15 years. The charm is largely gone. Everything looks the same. Crowds are everywhere, the smallness it had is no longer. MoneySense can’t even agree year to year what is best. Corktown Common is looking more and more appealing to this suburban commuter.

I assume you live in Oakville or you work for the rag that just made this claim. You must have some skin in the game (or you are a troll…if so, good on ya!). As money ALWAYS contracts around economic hubs, with Oakville being in between ‘Who the fuck cares’ and ‘Oakville…that place next to Mississauaga?’ it will meet a horrible fate, wore than Mississauaga or Brampton which both, debateably but not incorrect, have lively downtowns with people in the peripheral, youth and overall energy/growth/livliness. Last piece I read about ‘da oak’ was that the downtown is decrepit (massive vacancies, businesses can’t survive) and it is essentially a grave site for rich boomers and is dying a long, slow death…but I’ll take your word for it David! BD4L.

Oakville had the same swoon after last Spring everywhere else had and hasn’t gotten out of it yet this year. Getting named best city had little to do with real estate. The parameters changed from last year. Burlington went from the #1 spot the past 5 years to #31. By your logic Milton must have a really impressive Real Estate market since it went from 147 last year to number 6 in the country this year. Oakville went from 14 to 1.

10 year government bond is skyrocketing, currently at 2.34. If it breaks past 2.5, we’re at a 5 year high and hell breaks loose. If the government needs to pay more, you’ll pay more, and credit demand will drop very quickly.

That’s kind of true, but not really. The government can keep printing bonds and get the BoC to absorb liquidity. There’s huge consequences to the dollar, but they won’t care if it means they need to kickstart lending.